Starting MariaDB for the first time

After installing MariaDB (using sudo make install), but prior to starting MariaDB for the first time, one should:

ensure the directory where you installed MariaDB is owned by the mysql user (if the user doesn't exist, you'll need to create it)

run the mysql_install_db script to generate the needed system tables

Here is an example:

# The following assumes that the 'mysql' user exists and that we installed MariaDB# in /usr/local/mysql
chown -R mysql /usr/local/mysql/
scripts/mysql_install_db --user=mysql
/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

Testing MariaDB

If you want to test your compiled MariaDB, you can do either of:

make test

or

cd mysql-test ; ./mysql-test-run --force

Each of the above are run from the source directory. There is no need to 'sudo make install' MariaDB prior to running them.

NOTE: If you are doing more extensive testing or debugging of MariaDB (like with real application data and workloads) you may want to start and run MariaDB directly from the source directory instead of installing it with 'sudo make install'. If so, see
Running MariaDB from the Source Directory.

Increasing version number or tagging a version

If you have made code changes and want to increase the version number or tag our version with a specific tag you can do this by editing the VERSION file. Tags are shown when running the 'mysqld --version' command.